Course Directors

Al'ai Alvarez, MD, FACEP, FAAEM
Colin Bucks, M.D.
Preston B. Cline, Ed.D.

Faculty

Komal Bajaj, M.D., MS-HPE
Victoria Brazil, M.D.
Daniel Cabrera, M.D.
Ben Ceasar, M.D.
Dan Dworkis, M.D., Ph.D
Rose Fernandez, M.D.
David Gens, M.D.
Christopher Hicks, M.D.
Michael Lauria, M.D., NRP, FP-C
Shannon McNamara, M.D.
Eve Purdy, M.D., MSc
Paddy Steinfort, MAPP, BPT
Cara Taubman, M.D.

Al'ai Alvarez, MD, FACEP, FAAEM
Al'ai Alvarez, MD (@alvarezzzy) is a national leader and educator on Wellness and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. He is a clinical assistant professor of Emergency Medicine (EM) and the Director of Well-Being at Stanford Emergency Medicine. He co-leads the Human Potential Team and serves as the Fellowship Director of the Stanford EM Physician Wellness, and Co-Chair of the Stanford WellMD's Physician Wellness Forum. His work focuses on humanizing physician roles as individuals and teams through the harnessing of our individual human potential in the context of high-performance teams. This includes optimizing the interconnectedness between Process Improvement (Quality and Clinical Operations), Recruitment (Diversity), and Well-being (Inclusion). Currently, he is one of the 2021-2022 Faculty Fellows at the Stanford Byers Center for Biodesign.

Colin Bucks, M.D.
Colin Bucks, M.D. is an emergency medicine physician at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Dr. Bucks’s extensive career focuses on disaster preparedness and response. Prior to his contributions at Mayo Clinic, Dr. Bucks worked at the Stanford University School of Medicine as the Marc & Laura Andreessen Medical Director for Disaster Preparedness and the Director of the Stanford Emergency Medicine Program for Emergency Response (SEMPER). Dr. Bucks served as Medical Team Manager with FEMA Urban Search & Rescue with Pennsylvania Task Force 1 and California Task Force 3. He participated in humanitarian responses including the earthquakes in Haiti and Ecuador, the Typhoons Haiyan and Irma, the Rohingya genocide, and provided direct care for patients with Ebola in Liberia. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Bucks served as a frontline physician in addition to staffing Mayo Clinic’s incident command center. 

Preston B. Cline, Ed.D.
Dr. Preston B. Cline is the Co-founder of the Mission Critical Team Institute, which is an applied research institute focused on the development of an international collaborative inquiry community of Instructor Cadres within Military Special Operations, Emergency Medicine, Tactical Law Enforcement, Aerospace and Urban and Wilderness Fire Fighting Organizations within Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and the United States to improve our ability to manage emergent and critical events. The institute was launched in 2016 at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and incubated there for several years before becoming independent in 2018.  Preston began his career in the late 1980’s leading 60-day remote wilderness trips with adjudicated youth out of New Jersey he has since been cold wet tired and hungry on all seven continents leading both terrestrial and ocean expeditions. 

Preston has received a Bachelor’s of Science from Rutgers University, a Masters of Education from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, and a Doctorate in Education from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. 

Preston continues to contribute to the University of Pennsylvania as both a Senior Fellow, Center for Leadership and Change Management and a Visiting Scholar in the Wharton Neuroscience Initiative (WiN). When he is not working with Cadre, he resides in Annapolis with his extraordinary spouse Amy.

Komal Bajaj, M.D., MS-HPE
Dr. Komal Bajaj is a catalyst, advocate and professor based in New York City. She is an innovator in the fields of ingraining equity into quality/safety structures and healthcare simulation as an improvement tool.  She is passionate about enhancing healthcare culture and delivery for both patients and staff across NYC and beyond.

Victoria Brazil, M.D.

Dr. Victoria Brazil is an emergency physician and educator. She is Professor of Emergency Medicine and Director of Simulation at the Gold Coast Health Service, and leads the Bond University Translational Simulation Collaborative. Victoria’s main interests are in connecting education with patient care - through translational simulation for healthcare, and in developing high performing teams.

Victoria is an enthusiast in the social media and #FOAMed world (@SocraticEM). She is co-producer of Simulcast and she hosts the Harvard Macy Institute podcast. She also serves as a faculty member with the Harvard Macy Institute. drvictoriabrazil.com

Daniel Cabrera, M.D.

Dr. Daniel Cabrera is the Associate Dean for Continuous Professional Development and an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, as well as the previous Chair of Education and Associate Program Director for the Department of Emergency Medicine. He has been at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, since 2005. A native of Chile, he obtained his medical degree from Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile where he was also part of an experimental training program in EM.  He then completed an Emergency Medicine residency at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine. After his residency he enrolled in the ACEP/EMF Teaching Fellowship, and he has served as faculty in the same program for several years. He was the editor-in-chief for the Mayo Clinic EM Blog and is the co-director of Mayo Hootsuite Healthcare in Social Media course. He serves in the advisory board of numerous national and international educational societies.  

Dr. Cabrera has developed numerous technology innovations including automatic resource allocation systems, artificial intelligence algorithms for management optimization, network analysis of knowledge management and distributed testing. He is the current director of the Emergency Medicine Platform for Knowledge Solutions which is an idea incubator focused on innovation, entrepreneurship, digital health, and knowledge creation. His academic interests include artificial intelligence, wicked problems, knowledge management, clinical decision-making, health professions education and the interaction between humans and non-human agents. 

Ben Ceasar, M.D.
Lt Col Ben Caesar is a trauma and orthopaedic surgeon who has followed an unconventional career path. A two-time graduate of Sandhurst, he is a serving member of the Royal Army Medical Corps based in Colchester as part of 16 Air Assault Brigade. Prior to joining the army, Ben worked full time for the NHS. During this time, he was also employed by the Scottish Rugby Union as a pitch side doctor looking after professional and international level rugby players. While with the SRU, he taught numerous courses training other pitch side doctors. At age forty he was an established NHS consultant working at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London when he decided to join the army. In the last decade, he has deployed four times: Afghanistan in 2013, South Sudan on a mission with the United Nations in 2017, Middle East in 2020 and in August 2021 was one of the doctors who cared for the children passed over the fence in Afghanistan during Op Pitting, the UK’s largest evacuation mission since WWII. 

In 2016 he founded the Chavasse Clinic, a unique and holistic service for veterans and service personnel in Brighton. It’s his work with veterans which has spurred his interest in mental health, particularly amongst healthcare professionals. He’s a founding member of the British Orthopaedic Association Wellbeing Group, and has spoken internationally about leadership, burnout, well-being, suicide prevention and culture change, most recently at The Hospital for Special Surgery in New York. Ben is passionate about inspiring more caring and compassionate cultures within the workplace to create safer, fairer, and more inclusive environments so that we can all give our best in whatever we choose to do. He lives in Brighton with his American wife Regina, a writer, and their son Luke. 

Dan Dworkis, M.D., Ph.D
Dr. Dan Dworkis is an emergency physician, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at USC’s Keck School of Medicine, and the founder of The Emergency Mind Project. His work focuses on human performance under pressure, especially in times of emergency and crisis. Dan is the author of The Emergency Mind: Wiring Your Brain for Performance Under Pressure.

Rose Fernandez, M.D.
Dr. Fernandez is currently a Professor in Emergency Medicine and the Director of Research at the University of Florida Center for Experiential Learning and Simulation. Dr. Fernandez has expertise in patient safety research and healthcare team performance research. Much of her work focuses on using simulated environments to understand and improve resuscitation processes for both in-hospital and out-of-hospital emergencies. Dr. Fernandez has been a Principal Investigator on investigator-initiated grants funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Department of Defense, and the State of Washington.

David Gens, M.D.
Dr. David Gens finished his surgical residency training at the George Washington University Hospital in Washington D.C, then completed his fellowship in Trauma Surgery and Critical Care Medicine at the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center at the University of Maryland. He stayed on the staff at the trauma center and has been a surgeon there for 40 years. He has multiple peer reviewed publications and funded research. He is best known for his efforts in education. He has won numerous medical student awards (Golden Apples) as well as teaching awards from the trauma  fellowship. There is an endowed scholarship for medical students in his name at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

Christopher Hicks, M.D.
Dr. Christopher Hicks is an emergency physician and trauma team leader at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, and Assistant Professor and Clinician-Educator in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto.  He has innovated in several areas of resuscitation and psychological skills, including mental practice, stress inoculation training and the trauma black box program.  In 2018, as a partial rebuke of academic medicine, Dr. Hicks co-created and chaired resusTO, an inter-professional simulation-based resuscitation conference in Toronto with international acclaim.  In 2020, he co-founded Advanced Performance Healthcare Design, consulting with hospitals and industry using simulation to inform the design of systems, spaces, and teams.  He is an avid speaker and lecturer, staunch #FOAMed supporter, occasional runner and cyclist, fledgling boxer, semi-retired pianist, and proud father of three lunatic boys.

Michael Lauria, M.D., NRP, FP-C
Dr. Michael Lauria started working in emergency services in 2002 as a Firefighter/EMT-I.  In 2005, he graduated from Dartmouth College and enlisted in the Air Force, completed the rigorous Pararescue (PJ) training pipeline, and served at the 321st Special Tactics Squadron.  During his service he deployed to OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM as the primary medic assigned to a Combat Search and Rescue Team, Joint Special Operations Task Force, and in support of C Company, 1st Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne).  In October 2012, he returned to New Hampshire after accepting a position as a Critical Care/Flight Paramedic for the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Advanced Response Team (DHART).  Michael graduated with honors from the Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine in 2018 and completed Emergency Medicine residency at the University of New Mexico.  Currently, he is an EMS Fellow and will go onto a fellowship in Critical Care Medicine.  Outside of clinical responsibilities, he writes for the EMCrit podcast, consults for various emergency service organizations, and speaks around the world on clinical human factors and improving clinical performance in stressful situations.

Shannon McNamara, M.D.
Dr. Shannon McNamara is a board-certified Emergency Physician from New York City. She completed a fellowship in simulation based medical education, then led multiple simulation programs focused on interprofessional resuscitation teams in the Emergency Department. She is passionate about applying a complex systems paradigm to both teamwork and patient safety.

Eve Purdy, M.D., MSc
Dr. Eve Purdy is a Canadian emergency physician and applied anthropologist working in the Gold Coast, Australia. She uses a variety of methods, including action research, to help teams across healthcare contexts perform at their best.  She leads a research program related to psychological safety in the emergency department and is particularly interested in how relationships and familiarity contribute to team performance.

Paddy Steinfort, MAPP, BPT
Paddy Steinfort is a performance coach to some of the world’s best across multiple industries. Initially rising to prominence in professional sport after Sports Illustrated labeled him “Master Mind” in a 2020 feature, he now also coaches finance executives and business leaders as well as entertainers and entrepreneurs. He’s worked for more than a decade across multiple teams in the NBA, NFL, MLB and Olympic squads, as well as consulting for the US Army and Stanford Emergency Medicine, helping them - as both teams and individuals - better handle the uncertain, undefined and unexpected stressors unique to their fields so they can excel in the moments that matter most.

Cara Taubman, M.D.
Dr. Taubman is an Emergency Physician at Harlem Hospital where she is the Assistant Director for the Emergency Department, Clinical Director of Emergency Management for the hospital and Assistant Program Director for the MetHarlem Emergency Medicine residency. She graduated from New York Medical College with an MD and MPH and completed her Emergency Medicine residency at Jacobi and Montefiore Medical Centers where she served as Chief Resident. During residency she received Leo M. Davidoff society’s Award for Medical Student Education and Emergency Physician of the year. After residency she went on to a Global Emergency Medicine fellowship at Columbia University where she worked with the Ministries of Health in both Ghana and Rwanda and for Doctors Without Borders.